Beyond Apollo

By Barry Malzberg

Winner of the first John W. Campbell Memorial Award. “A mind-bending read . . . certainly entertaining, often very funny and very thought-provoking.” —Medium
 
A two-man mission to Venus fails and is aborted; when it returns, the Captain is missing and the other astronaut, Harry M. Evans, is unable to explain what has happened. Or, conversely, he has too many explications; his journal of the expedition—compiled in the mental institution to which NASA has embarrassedly committed him—offers contradictory stories: he murdered the Captain, mad Venusian invaders murdered the Captain, the Captain vanished, no one was murdered and the Captain has returned in Evans’s guise.
 
As the explanations pyramid and the supervising psychiatrist’s increasingly desperate efforts to get a straight story fail, it becomes apparent that Evans’s madness and his inability to explain what happened are expressions of humanity’s incompetence at the enormity of space exploration.
 
“Barry Malzberg’s dark, bleak vision of the future is one of the most terrifying ever to come out of science fiction.” —Robert Silverberg
 
“Beyond Apollo is a masterpiece; a multi-faceted rumination on repression; a virulent critique of the space program and America’s obsession with space.” —Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations
 
“A light shone through a crystal. The reader never gets to see the crystal or the light, only the resulting refraction . . .  a very satisfying work of post-modern science fiction.” —Speculiction
 
“Veins of gold . . . a beautiful and heart-breaking book.”—Fantasy and Science Fiction
 
“Written with wit . . . the most original and pleasing SF novel of the last five years.”—Brian Aldiss, New Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 29, 2010
• ISBN: 9780795323485

Book preview

1

I loved the Captain in my own way, although I knew that he was insane, the poor bastard. This was only partly his fault: one must consider the conditions. The conditions were intolerable. This will never work out.

2

In the novel I plan to write of the voyage, the Captain will be a tall, grim man with piercing eyes who has no fear of space. Onward! I hear him shout. Fuck the bastards. Fuck control base; they’re only a bunch of pimps for the politicians anyway. We’ll make the green planet yet or plunge into the sun. Venus forever! To Venus! Shut off all the receivers now. Take no messages. Listen to nothing they have to say; they only want to lie about us to keep the administrators content. Venus or death! Death or Venus! No fear, no fear!

He has also had, in the book, a vigorous and satisfying sex life, which lends power and credence to his curses and his very tight analysis of the personalities at control. We will find our humanity under the gases of Venus, the Captain will say, and then the sounds of the voyage overwhelm us and momentarily he says nothing more. I sit with hands clasped, awaiting further word.

The novel, when I write it, should find a large commercial outlet. People still love to read stories of space, and here for the first time they will learn the sensational truth. Even though it is necessary for me to idealize the Captain in order to make the scheme more palatable, the novel will have great technical skill and will make use of my many vivid experiences in and out of the program. They cannot do this kind of thing to us and leave us nothing. I believe that passionately. The novel will be perhaps sixty-five thousand words long, and I will send it only to the very best publishers.

3

On one of these nights I dream that the Captain is falling again. He is falling through the capsule into the center of the sun. Out, he says, enough of this. I’m calling a halt to the bullshit before they turn me into a machine. Backed into a bulkhead, I beg him to be controlled and assume command of the voyage again, but he says he cannot because of the forces of gravity. Gravity is making him fall into the sun.

I can’t do all this myself, I cry as he begins to slither away again. I’m only equipped to be the copilot. My certification is limited.

I’m sorry, he says with infinite regret, disappeared to the neck now, his fine eyebrows poised as if for sex or intricate testimony. I misjudged the whole thing totally. It is a mystery. You will have to do the best you can, Evans: find some answers of your own, and then he disappears, not saying goodbye. The ship convulses slightly as if the Captain were excrement just cleansed.

I wonder why I do not follow my commander into the sun and be done with it, but there is no time for reflection; I have many things to do to keep the ship on course lest it miss Venus and follow the Captain into the solar region. I resolve to follow it through; perhaps this is another simulation testing my psychological strength.

4

The personnel in this large and rather homey institution warn me that I cannot go on this way indefinitely, that I must start acting in a reasonable fashion. This is a convenient escape for you, they remind me, and we’ve allowed it to go on as long as this because we thought you needed some compensatory adjustment, but now it must come to an end. You must grow up, Evans, face reality again. It is time. It is necessary. You must remember what happened to you. You must tell us all of this; we need the information to save others. You would not want to cause the death of a hundred others on the crews because you were too selfish to speak, would you?

You wouldn’t send them out until I had spoken, would you? I reply, my only response in weeks, and then I begin to laugh. I laugh heartily in a most unseemly manner and eventually the institutional personnel go away, although they are scheduled to return to me tomorrow and press me further. The routine is really quite organized. Some of them are young, but on the other hand, some of them are old. Some of them are male, but then again a good many of them are female and these, even unto the ugliest and most professionalized, I eye with vague lust, thinking about connection. I wonder if they will trade a fuck for some information but decide that their procedures are none of my affair; in addition to that, my lust is idle, idle—the magic rays from space rendered me impotent at last, which is a blessing. The fury will overtake me no more. I return to thoughts of the novel I will write, which will be my single attempt to give the full and final truth of the voyage in such a way that all those who understand will surely admire my strength.

5

Several thousand men applied for the project and only a few hundred were accepted. Of these hundreds, only twenty survived screening for the Venus flight and only the Captain and I were finally selected: two out of a pool of some thousand, the highest tenth of one percentile. According to the selection processes, I am the second most qualified man in the country to set foot on Venus for the first time, or at least I was at the time that the Committee made this final determination. Even retrospectively this fills me with a small glow of accomplishment—it is no small thing to have been so highly qualified—even though, at least in the case of the Captain, such a serious mistake was evidently made.

6

I dream I see the Captain fucking his wife. He rears over her, intolerably strong, enormously agile, plunging himself into her wastes. I have never met his wife but picture her well. Fuck me, you bitch, he whispers, "fuck me good; tomorrow we’re going into isolation for the flight and it may be months until I get laid again, depending upon how things work out. She smiles at him, winsome in the darkness, and squeezes her thighs reflexively. The Captain groans and discharges, falls across her in small stages like planks of wood settling, and begins to gasp, Too fast, too fast, you bitch, he says and bites her shoulder; but there is the intimation of a smile on his face (I can move very close to them in the dark), and I see that although he is humiliated, he is also proud that he is able to come so fast. It is the mark of a real spaceman. Bitch, bitch," the Captain murmurs, and thinking of Venus, he falls asleep against her.

7

In this solar system Venus is the second planet from the sun. It was discovered and labeled a planet by the most ancient astronomers, who in consultation with senior astrologers deemed it the planet of love. Men were tantalized by Venus for centuries, although the first manned expedition there did not occur until 1981.

During the middle third of the twentieth century probes conducted by remote capsules revealed nothing other than that the terrain was mysteriously concealed by thick layers of gases destructive to all biological life as we have conceived of it. This was a great disappointment to scientists who had thought that the life-system of Venus was the most likely of the other eight planets to sustain intelligent life and might even serve as an escape hatch in the event that our own planet should become overcrowded or ruined by atomic devices. It was in the hope of further information about this planet that the initial manned expedition to Venus embarked. The two men on the ship were the survivors of a rigorous selection process and testing program which had established beyond doubt that they were in the highest percentile of fitness and could be trusted to perform well on this unique and extremely well-publicized mission.

Success was particularly important in light of the unsatisfactory Mars adventure of 1976 which so shocked the administrators that explorations of the red planet were abandoned for the duration.

8

Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling that the disaster could have been averted. It was my fault; mere presence of mind would have controlled the situation.

Nonsense, I should have said to the Captain. These suicidal impulses are the result of an anxiety attack, a simple psychoneurotic reaction which can be easily controlled. Get hold of yourself. Be calm. Take the long view. In the anterior bulkhead is a cabinet containing multiple grains of disulfiamazole. Read the instructions carefully and then take a double dosage.

We have no business out here, the Captain says anyway. None whatsoever. I see it clearly now, more clearly than I have ever seen anything in my life. Nothing can justify this horror. I have had this insight. I have had this enormous insight into everything. Things are not worth the price we pay. They lied to us all the way through. Unless we take action, they will lie to us forever.

Still, I say calmly, stop raving. Be mature. Consider your responsibilities. This is no time for metaphysical and political rhetoric. Not with the course degrees for Venus to be charted so soon and another television broadcast scheduled some hours from now, in which we will show them some of the effects of lighting upon the anterior of the ship. And reminisce a bit together to give them the personal touch.

There is nothing to be charted. We are navigated by remote control. They have given us an illusion of function to keep us from going mad.

Still, the broadcast.

I do not want to perform for them. I have no homilies; I do not want to be a television personality. Instead, I want to spit in their cameras and expose myself.

There is no time for that, I say kindly. I understand your position and am highly sympathetic, but you are the commander of this voyage and have responsibilities. Meet them; be a man.

Slowly but firmly, I exert tremendous pressure on the trembling elbow of the Captain, lead him to the cabinet, fling it open and, removing a bottle, force five grains of disulfiamazole into his distorted mouth. He receives them like cookies.

The Captain chokes, then chews thoughtfully, his features changing and shifting to their more customary content. He sighs, groans, scratches himself, a coarse amiability moving from him in slow, uneven waves.

Thank you, Evans, the Captain says. I feel much better, thanks to you.

I’m glad. It was my pleasure. Anything I can do to help, I will.

It must have been a fit, just a passing episode. A hint of strangeness overtaking me when I thought of the enormous responsibilities we carry. To land on Venus! To explore! To find another home for mankind! I feel much better now. I will plot courses. I will make deductions. I will smile when the broadcast begins and tell anecdotes of the old days in the academy.

Mumbling, he moves from the cabinet and begins swiftly to work, seated in a cramped position, absorbed in logarithms or whatever other figures the computer disgorges. I sigh; Evans sighs. Evans relaxes and lets the tension drain from him, thinking how terrible it might have been if he had not assumed command of the situation; how the Captain’s depression might have increased and he, throwing himself into the sun, would have brought the expedition to an abrupt halt.

9

I have a wife. Evans has a wife. Evans and I are the same person, but it is easier sometimes to slip into a more objective tense; there is now so little of myself I can bear that perhaps distancing is the answer. Another name for this, the institutional personnel hint, is disassociation reaction. I have a disassociation reaction. Evans has a disassociation reaction. Each of us has a disassociation reaction, but mine is stronger than his.

Evans has a wife. She is twenty-seven years old, with brown hair and eyes, and he admits that months ago he lived with and committed sexual acts upon her. He has some recollection of breasts with nipples like deadly painted eyes, a cunt which was slow to moisten but eventually enveloped him like knives. She comes to him now, a vaguely pretty girl with breasts now discreetly hidden, and touches his hand. His trembling hand, so dense against the sheets. Pity Evans. I do. He did not choose this way.

Please, she says and then shakes her head at the ceiling as if looking for cameras. Please tell them what you know, Harry. They have sent me to you as the last chance before they take further action. They are talking about shock, although I am not supposed to tell you that. They say that there will be special treatments and painful re-enactment therapy.

Ah, I say. Aha.

"They’ll only force the truth from

Reviews for Beyond Apollo

[jmkemp-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a difficult read. At first it seemed incoherent trash, and I put it down frequently. Having finished it I believe it is a work of genius.

Only the relative shortness made me keep picking it back up.

I picked it to read as it seemed like it would be a hard SF space flight story. To some extent it is, however what it really covers is the ascent from insanity of the lone survivor of the failed two man mission to Venus. The seemingly incoherent start is merely a reflection of the main character's madness and lack of grip on reality. Slowly we are presented with many different explanations for what may have happened, which grow more and more plausible as the character recovers. Although it is never properly resolved, but it doesn't need to, the point of the story being about the effects of long term travel in a confined space.

[majesdane-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A bizarre, but entertaining story. Truly the poster book for the theme of "unreliable narrator".

[aickman-3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a brilliant SF novel, presenting an unsolvable puzzle. The narrative is equally hilarious and terrifying, quite impressive. Probably not for all tastes.

[tungsten_peerts · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a small stunner of a book. Malzberg is one of the better pure writers to ever do 'science fiction' and one of the lights of the New Wave of the 1960s and early 1970s. Of course a lot of s.f. people hated this book back in the day for its very frank treatment of sex and its refusal to say things clearly -- or, rather, undisputably. Harry M. Evans is the ne plus ultra of the unreliable narrator. This book has a savage, jumpy purity that makes it nearly as fresh and snarling today as it was 46 (!) years ago.